If your company has a blog, website, social media (or any other channel) there comes a time when you need to clearly define what language will be used on each of them.
Especially if you deal with multiple content producers. The more people come into contact with your content, the greater the chance of language inconsistencies arising.
This is where the style guide comes into play: a document that standardizes your company's language and tone of voice, ensuring that it is correctly adopted across communication channels.
“ But… do I really need to make a style guide? Wouldn’t kuwait number in whatsapp that be a waste of time?”
Obviously, that's a decision your company will make. A style guide can be long, complicated to create, and will take time and dedication from your team.
But isn't it worth making that investment and optimising your time in the future? In the end, without a manual of good language and writing practices, you will spend a lot of time correcting all the content that passes through you while ensuring that it is appropriate for your company's proposal.
That's why, in this content, we'll explain the process of producing our own style guide and give you tips on how to build one for your company.
Come on?
Things to know before you start
Before we begin, it's important to define what you want to address in your style guide. We chose to make a comprehensive guide, explaining in detail the language and tone of voice of each of our channels, but that doesn't mean you need to do the same with yours.
MailChimp 's style guide (which inspired us a lot when producing our own), for example, is rather brief: they chose to address only textual patterns.
In our case, as we have many channels, many people involved and a lot of content being produced on all of them, it is essential for us to talk about good practices not only in terms of text, but also in terms of image, in each of them.
However, it is important to keep in mind that your guide NEEDS to contain:
Your brand's tone of voice
Language
Details and definitions of how to use certain terms (we decided, for example, that we will write email like this, without a hyphen).